Friday, March 17, 2006

Embodied and Embedded

I’ve been reading in liturgical studies this week. It raised several different emotions for me.
I grew up with some liturgy… a nominally catholic background. I remember being fascinated with the ritual. Searching through the missal trying to follow the service. Staring at the crucifix until the rest of the world faded away in a blur. I would occasionally ride my bike the ½ mile to church. St. Sylvester’s, a small catholic parish looking out on to the bay. I remember winning some award in catechism and choosing a white porcelain sculpture of Mary, about 6 inches tall, as my prize. It sat next to my bed for many years. I remember the priest gathering us around the altar and explaining the ritual of the Eucharist. I no longer remember what question I answered correctly, but I was given the privilege of ringing the bell as the altar boys normally would as he enacted the ritual for us. I craved ritual when I was a child. Snuck rides to confession with friends. Found rides with neighbors on Easter.

I still crave worship that evokes that sense of mystery, whether contemporary or liturgical. Some of my peers would call me selfish or heretical for that. Worship is supposed to be about God, not about my own wants or needs. Perhaps, though, it is more than my own selfish desires that draw me to a certain type of worship. Many of the articles I read this week talked about the role of ritual in our lives. In particular, they talk about how we come to know things through ritual, about ourselves, our community, and about God. In ritual we do not just learn things with our mind or our heart, we actually learn with our bodies. The act of worship itself forms us.

Byron Anderson says several things about communal worship…
“Socially and psychologically, the sharing of meaning enacted and constructed in the course of ritual identifies a person with (or outside of) a community even as it grounds that person’s sense of self, rooting deeply ‘an orientation which can be drawn upon at a moment’s notice, even unconsciously.”

Perhaps there is something deep within me, something embodied, something unconscious, that was formed during those early years of worship, something I still seek. But more importantly than that, the God I know is the God I met in those early worship services. While I rationally and logically know that God is more than those early experiences, I still often feel closest to God in worship that evokes those earliest experiences.

I must say, though, that reading liturgical studies also evokes some very negative emotions for me. If communal worship forms us in ways we don’t even know… not just by what we say but by how we say it, who says it, where we say it, how we move (or don’t) while we say it… what has it meant to spend most of my time in churches where women are not allowed to preach or lead the sacraments. What do I learn about the church, myself, and God… what do I learn that I carry deep inside me, because I have been refused a place at the table. I remember vividly sitting in a church where I served on staff during a communion service. The associate pastor, who also had just completed his Master of Divinity and was not yet ordained, was presiding. The all male elder board was distributing the elements. I would never be allowed to participate in this sacrament at this church. While my worth as a woman and as a minister (not a pastor) was regularly affirmed, in that moment all I could feel was my separation from God. What I was learning in this ritual, embodied and embedded deep within me, was that I could not approach God on my own. There would always need to be a man between me and God. I felt as if someone had placed a heavy curtain between me and God. The curtain that was torn from top to bottom as Christ died on the cross had been put back in place.
Who else are we marginalizing in our worship? What are we learning and teaching through our words, our actions, our icons, our spaces, our motions?

(work cited: Worship and Christian Identity: Practicing Ourselves by E. Byron Anderson)

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